Congress is responsible for all spending, deficits, and surpluses - not Presidents. The truly insane spending binge that the Democrat controlled Congress went on in 2008 and 2009 was mitigated by the GOP taking control of the House in 2010. It is only because of the GOP controlled House since 2010 that deficits are starting to return to where they were 6 years ago (not that that is good either) before the Democrats took control of Congress.

Obama and the Democrats have been trying for years to increase spending (2nd and 3rd stimulus). The Republicans; “the party of NO” has stopped each and every attempt.

Deficit spending is dropping as a percentage because of increased taxes, not because of a balanced budget.

Your statement is not entirely true. The 2009 budget, the first over $3 trillion, was presented to congress by George W Bush. Yes, the congress was controlled by Democrats, but they had 2 very costly wars and a major league recession to deal with. If you want to wage multi-trillion dollar wars, you have to pay for them. You don't do that by taking away Social Security and Medicare from future generations. My argument will always prevail because people will never allow those benefits to be taken away from them. That is political suicide, even for Republicans!

If you include the years preceding his administration, you will see that the deficit prior to Obama's election was 1.2% of GDP. His deficit "reductions" are only reductions of the increases that he himself made at the beginning of his administration. As for truly reducing the deficit, he hasn't. He has racked up more debt than any other president.

To hide Obama's poor performance and broken promises, liberals only count fiscal numbers from 2008 onwards so that they can give the appearance of a job well done by cutting out any comparison to the situation prior to his election. Since the first major thing by his administration was the stimulus, it becomes very easy to come out smelling like a rose when you pretend that the tremendously inflated stimulus numbers (that was added to Bush's tab) as a baseline of the economy.

$1.3Trillion deficit was all Obama. It was Obama that signed the 2009 Omnibus Spending Bill, not Bush. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi waited to pass it until Obama could sign it.

News Buzzard wrote:Your statement is not entirely true. The 2009 budget, the first over $3 trillion, was presented to congress by George W Bush. Yes, the congress was controlled by Democrats, but they had 2 very costly wars and a major league recession to deal with. If you want to wage multi-trillion dollar wars, you have to pay for them. You don't do that by taking away Social Security and Medicare from future generations. My argument will always prevail because people will never allow those benefits to be taken away from them. That is political suicide, even for Republicans!

No one wants to take benefits away, but the retirement age needs to keep pace with actuarial tables

The actuarial tables are a good point, Red Hill, but we now pay tax on up to 85% of our Social Security income. A portion of that money could be directed to the Social Security and Medicare budgets to offset the lengthening of the actuarial tables. I have no problem paying that money if it goes to the preservation of those programs. It also wouldn't break the backs of the upper earners if the caps were raised somewhat. I know that is difficult on the self employed, but I think if a company can see it's way to pay someone $250 thousand a year it wouldn't be the end of the world for them to pay a few extra thousand into the social programs. In the end, the overwhelming majority of Americans will not accept the termination of Social Security and Medicare, as well as Obamacare. Once people truly realize what guys like Paul Ryan have in store for them, it will never happen. The problem is we have a very long learning curve in this country and most of the younger workers have no clue what vouchers and privatization means. Once they find out the Republicans will be screwed.

News Buzzard wrote: In the end, the overwhelming majority of Americans will not accept the termination of Social Security and Medicare, as well as Obamacare. Once people truly realize what guys like Paul Ryan have in store for them, it will never happen. The problem is we have a very long learning curve in this country and most of the younger workers have no clue what vouchers and privatization means. Once they find out the Republicans will be screwed.

Agreed, but I can't help but think that if we did not have so many "non-seniors" on SSDI, we would be OK as well.

You're the one who is definitely confused. Bush's tax cuts, wars and recession cost us about 90% of that buildup up to a $17 trillion debt. Obama's stimulus cost about $800 billion and resulted in a net gain of about 2 million jobs. The reason our unemployment rate is now 5.9% is because of the stimulus, quantitative easing and the bailout of the auto industry. The Republicans have passed zero jobs bills, unless of course you want to count their mad attempt to gut regulations as jobs bills. Oh, wait a minute, maybe opening up the Keystone Pipeline will create 2 million jobs!!

News Buzzard wrote:You're the one who is definitely confused. Bush's tax cuts, wars and recession cost us about 90% of that buildup up to a $17 trillion debt. Obama's stimulus cost about $800 billion and resulted in a net gain of about 2 million jobs. The reason our unemployment rate is now 5.9% is because of the stimulus, quantitative easing and the bailout of the auto industry. The Republicans have passed zero jobs bills, unless of course you want to count their mad attempt to gut regulations as jobs bills. Oh, wait a minute, maybe opening up the Keystone Pipeline will create 2 million jobs!!

Nobody but a far left ideologue would believe any of that nonsense. Obama continuned and added to Bush's spending. Anyone paying attention regardless of political beliefs knows the Democrats want to invest (spend) more money than we are already spending. They blame Republicans in the house for not passing spending bill after spending bill and then turn around and claim it’s the republicans that are driving up debt. You can’t make this stuff up.

The stimulus failed miserably.

Obama is responsible for 100% of the debt added during his tenure.

Most people are not fooled by the nonsense being pushed by Obama and his followers.

More than 50% of the country believe the Obama Administration is a disaster. Not a failure but a disaster.

I don’t expect you would agree with this but make no mistake, your opinions on this is squarely in the minority.

Now back to the claim the deficit has dropped….

This appears to be more just more fuzzy math.

In 2014 the Federal government spent 4.349 trillion.

Increased taxes have projected revenues of 3 trillion.

Hmmmm????????

Well how did they come up with a deficit of only 649 Billion?

Oh yeah… because they are using the term BUDGET DEFICIT. They over budgeted by 700 billion and counted that as saved money.

President Obama’s budget suffered its latest ignominious defeat when the Senate rejected it on a 98-1 vote Tuesday evening, capping off the first votes of the budget season. Democrats objected, saying the plan wasn’t really Mr. Obama’s, but Republicans said it had all the same numbers as the president’s blueprint, and so the vote counts as a rejection of his fiscal year 2016 plan. “This is the president’s proposed budget,” said Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who forced the vote by offering the amendment, complete with the tax hikes, spending increases and deficit targets...washingtontimes.com

Hey...one vote for! A new high!

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_________________..."The beauty of being a liberal is that history always begins this morning..."